I'm just making a new post to replace the rather makeshift one I originally put up regarding Chicago Open. Of course, it will (now officially) be the weekend of July 19. I've copied the dates for submitting packets from the other post, for convenience.

In addition to getting your packet in (since the early deadline is, like you know, today), everyone should email me their team names...it's about time we have a tournament where teams have names more exciting than "Team Player X", and I'd rather not think of names myself. Okay, that's all for now.

Ryan Westbrook, no affiliation whatsoever.

I am pure energy...and as ancient as the cosmos. Feeble creatures, GO!

Left here since birth...forgotten in the river of time...I've had an eternity to...ponder the meaning of things...and now I have an answer!

I guess I should mention this here. I'm a little nebulous about exactly how many teams are planning/have actually decided to play CO - I think it's either 15 or 16. It's tough for me to tell. I'd really rather it be 15, as a number of people were lobbying me for a (rather epic) 15-team round robin - 16 would be an unfortunate number as it would involve double byes, etc. With 15 teams, you'd get a bunch of rounds and the chance to play every packet but your own and to play every team. So, if it's found that there are 16 teams playing - I don't want anyone to feel pressured into anything - but I'm curious as to whether we can somehow consolidate into 15 teams (for example, by a less experienced team joining other incomplete teams or something like that). I'd be willing to give substantial financial incentive if this is possible.

Ryan Westbrook, no affiliation whatsoever.

I am pure energy...and as ancient as the cosmos. Feeble creatures, GO!

Left here since birth...forgotten in the river of time...I've had an eternity to...ponder the meaning of things...and now I have an answer!

wd4gdz wrote:It's obvious others disagree with me, but I'd actually be in favor of something like 2 pools of 8 instead of a massive round round. Sure there'd be double byes, but that just means extra staff.

This raises a good question: do you actually have enough people committed to staffing for one bye to work?

Also, the list is missing the team that Rom implied he's going to be playing on in the other thread, which would bring the total to 17.

If staffing isn't an issue, and 17 teams have already registered, then perhaps one more team could come out of the woodwork to give 18 teams. Then it's two brackets of 9 for an initial RR of 8 games over 9 rounds, and then maybe the top 5 and bottom 4 from each play each other in cross bracket playoffs, with an advantaged final happening if needed. These playoffs would have no byes, so I would assume that's where the staffing problem could manifest. Surely one could find 9 people in the Chicago area to read though, no? Assuming Ryan, I'd guess Steven Canning since he's doing some editing, and I think Katy P. is coming, that leaves only 6 more (I can't go myself) to find.

As exciting as some sort of grand epic 17 game RR or double-bye 15 game RR would be, aren't you guys planning another tournament afterward? I may be less hard-core than most of you, but still...

I don't know how crazy I'd be about playing 16+ rounds, seeing as how there is going to be another tournament afterwards (of probably 10 or more rounds). I don't think we played 16 rounds last year (although I don't completely remember) and that tournaments still went very late, making the Lit tournament go even later.

The side tournaments are great, but they are just that--a side attraction to the main event. I wouldn't want to compromise a potential 17-game Chicago Open that would be legendary for years to come just to accommodate another tournament.

I don't know how widespread this knowledge is, but if you end up being stuck with 16 teams, you can still do 2 initial brackets of 8 teams each, and each team will only have one bye game. It's a little tricky to arrange the schedule, but Berkeley's useful scheduling page tells you how to do it:http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~quizbowl/schedules.html
If everybody already knew this, then just ignore this post.

Schweizerkas wrote:I don't know how widespread this knowledge is, but if you end up being stuck with 16 teams, you can still do 2 initial brackets of 8 teams each, and each team will only have one bye game. It's a little tricky to arrange the schedule, but Berkeley's useful scheduling page tells you how to do it:http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~quizbowl/schedules.html
If everybody already knew this, then just ignore this post.

The problem is that once the initial round robins are done, every team has already had a bye, but 8 of the teams still have their packet left to be read, so they'll have to have a second bye when their packet is used after the rebracketing.

Tim Hartman and I are presently working on a packet to be submitted by June 19. We currently need 1-2 confirmed teammates, depending on Arsalan Khan's availability. I would like to compete with Ray Sun from my MLK and NW Sun 'n Fun Mirror teams again, and I have always wanted to have Jared Sagoff on one of my teams. We shall be called Rom & Friends.

Rom Masrour
president of RomNation at the races
2011 INDYCAR, 2012 NASCAR, 2012 GRAND-AM, & 2012 American Le Mans Series hard card holder
licensed crew member for car #51 in the 2011-2012 NASCAR Nationwide Series & car #15 in the 2012 GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series
"I'm glad you were at Kentucky for Ed's win instead of me."
"Rommy is better known in the paddock than half the drivers are."
"Drivers love Rommy even more than Rommy loves them."

Due to some kink in my computer, I can't seem to update my own posts, so I'll just make another one with the updated field...at least before someone loses their patience with my incompetence and yells at me for not doing so.

I'll let you know about format once I see the packets I receive at the last deadline. I really don't like any of the "two-bracket" options, so it will either be a full round robin or a "modified round robin." More on that if and when it becomes necessary to explain.

Ryan Westbrook, no affiliation whatsoever.

I am pure energy...and as ancient as the cosmos. Feeble creatures, GO!

Left here since birth...forgotten in the river of time...I've had an eternity to...ponder the meaning of things...and now I have an answer!

So, I'm now prepared to say that we will be doing a full round robin at CO. While I think it's a bit of a stretch, my reasons for this format are several. Most importantly, I would like to use all of the packets received by teams, as many of them were quite good, instead of cutting up or combining packets which really don't need it - and when combined together, the number of packets I have are exactly the number necessary to do a full round robin. Secondly, all of the two-bracket options for format seem to necessarily involve some pretty annoying features - they would force things like double byes, or playoff rounds where all that could be used are editor packets, etc. So, yeah, full round robin...I visualize it as a realization of that silly "24 hours of QB" everyone was so excited about a while ago.

Ryan Westbrook, no affiliation whatsoever.

I am pure energy...and as ancient as the cosmos. Feeble creatures, GO!

Left here since birth...forgotten in the river of time...I've had an eternity to...ponder the meaning of things...and now I have an answer!

A full round-robin among 17 teams requires 17 rounds, plus the possibility of up to 2 rounds of finals.

Nonetheless, this is Chicago Open; the teams all know how this works and the moderators should be fairly good. I see no reason why rounds should take more than half an hour to complete. If we get started at 9 AM and include an hour for lunch, the tournament ought to be over by 7:30. Disaster will only happen if people keep insisting that it must.

I personally find it far from unreasonable to ask teams to be there at 7:30 for an 8 AM start. That would give us a little more cushion and ideally just allow the tournament to end earlier. We will also have to be very strict with timing; if you're not there by 8 and/or if you're not back from lunch on time, attempts will be made to switch byes around but if that's not possible you will forfeit the round. If we can just keep it moving and make sure teams don't screw up, surely time won't ultimately be a problem.

On that note--what exactly is going on with this movie thing? How confident are we that everything (including, I think, lunch) can be organized and four 50-TU rounds can be played in under an hour? I am not at all confident that this can happen. I think it might be a good idea to move the movie tournament to lunch on Sunday if possible, since trash plus Trygvebowl is definitely going to be a shorter affair than CO plus lit. Is this a possibility?

Also, another way to save some time would be to order in lunch and give people like half an hour to attack it. If people are going to go out for lunch, it might make sense for some people, particularly those who leave late, to order their food to go or call their orders in as they're walking over. At the very least, avoid Edwardo's.

myamphigory wrote:Also, another way to save some time would be to order in lunch and give people like half an hour to attack it. If people are going to go out for lunch, it might make sense for some people, particularly those who leave late, to order their food to go or call their orders in as they're walking over. At the very least, avoid Edwardo's.

Perhaps a similar setup should be done with dinner to alleviate the time taken between CO proper and lit.

But I'm all for ordering in. It seems like it's hard to walk, order, eat, and walk back in an hour from campus. My group will have a vehicle if that will help or provide an option in addition to pizza (subs, maybe?).

I don't think the time for the film tourney was ever set in stone, so I'd be happy to do that on Sunday either during lunch or just after the trash if it ends reasonably early. (I have an engagement Sunday morning, so the lunch thing is still an iffy.) If anyone who signed up for films can't make it on Sunday, pls lemme kno. I'd need 3 buzzer systems and just short of 1.5 hrs for the 1st 3 rounds, so I'd recommend doing just the 1st 3 rounds for lunch, then have a short get-together just b/f dinner or something for the final round involving the top group of either 6 or 9 ppl (and optionally the rest of the field).

I'd like to cast a vote for not making the CO weekend resemble the Bataan Death March of quizbowl any more than it absolutely has to. History into the night on Friday; then a 7:30 am check-in time for CO; then 17+ rounds of CO, uninterrupted by lunch break; then an immediate segue into the lit tournament? That's a hell of a day, with or without this movies thing.

However, I'm not going to take a 90 minute lunch break during the trash tournament so the movie questions can also be played. I'd suggest holding the movie thing after either CO or trash, so people who want to take a leisurely dinner break can do that, whereas masochists who simply cannot get enough quizbowl can continue to enjoy their fix.

I don't think that I would have a problem with putting the movies tournament in between the end of trash and the start of social science/philosophy. If anyone who is planning to play SS/Phil, but was planning to fly out Sunday night and would therefore be impacted by having SS/Phil end later, let me know. If a significant number of people contact me, I'm afraid I'll have to ask that we start SS/Phil as soon as possible after trash to finish quickly.

As an increasingly-concerned Trygve Bowl co-editor, here is my suggestion:

-I'm unclear where the premise that there'd be no lunch break during CO arose, but assuming there is in fact lunch, I suggest doing rounds 1 and 2 of the movies tournament during that lunch break for people who want to stay there and order-in food.

-Alternatively, I'd say ordering in food for everyone, if logistically possible, seems like the best way to cut down on excessive lunch delay. I hear bad things happened with this once though.

-If we decide there should be a dinner break between CO and Lit Doubles, and it is long enough, let's do the other 2 rounds of movies then. Tossups will go quickly enough. If not:

-Do the other 2 rounds of lit doubles during Trash lunch on Sunday, following the same pattern.

It's my hope that this plan will allow us to start TrygveBowl asap; since people seem to be flying out Sunday night, we really do not want to be going extraordinarily late with this. The earlier we can start without inconveniencing other events, the better. After all, if people want to play movies (as I personally really do), I think it should come out of meal or whatever time instead of any established event.

Chris Ray
OSU
University of Chicago, 2016
University of Maryland, 2014
ACF, PACE

I like the idea of splitting up the movies tournament, but I think for CO lit it worked fine last year where Seth ordered pizzas in and we stopped lit when those pizzas arrived and had a break long enough to eat a few pieces, and then got right back to playing.

Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White

DumbJaques wrote:-Alternatively, I'd say ordering in food for everyone, if logistically possible, seems like the best way to cut down on excessive lunch delay. I hear bad things happened with this once though.

Back when I was at Swarthmore, we would routinely order pizza for all the teams competing, because a) it saved time and b) there were precious few food options in the borough. Out of the eight tournaments we hosted in my four years there, it blew up in our face once, when we had a 22-team field for SNEWT and the pizza place forgot that we had warned them the day before (or we forgot to warn them, it wasn't clear). The tournament was delayed ~45 minutes while we all hungrily waited, and a couple teams wandered off in search of food, which delayed things a little longer. I highly recommend ordering food in- especially if you can warn the establishment the night before, to cut down on the chance of snafus.

And if they do forget, then just delay lunch a round! (Should be a lot easier to pull off at CO then at J. Random Juniorbird Tournament...)

DumbJaques wrote:-Alternatively, I'd say ordering in food for everyone, if logistically possible, seems like the best way to cut down on excessive lunch delay. I hear bad things happened with this once though.

Back when I was at Swarthmore, we would routinely order pizza for all the teams competing, because a) it saved time and b) there were precious few food options in the borough. Out of the eight tournaments we hosted in my four years there, it blew up in our face once, when we had a 22-team field for SNEWT and the pizza place forgot that we had warned them the day before (or we forgot to warn them, it wasn't clear). The tournament was delayed ~45 minutes while we all hungrily waited, and a couple teams wandered off in search of food, which delayed things a little longer. I highly recommend ordering food in- especially if you can warn the establishment the night before, to cut down on the chance of snafus.

And if they do forget, then just delay lunch a round! (Should be a lot easier to pull off at CO then at J. Random Juniorbird Tournament...)

Well I would hope that if the pizza isn't there immediately after the round before lunch finishes, the next round should just be started. People are going to be hungry anyways so you might as well play quizbowl while you wait.

Usually, intricate plans like this fall apart not because they are inherently bad ideas, but because there are too many people making proposals about what should happen and nobody definitively taking responsibility for making it happen. If someone from Chicago could step up, that would be very comforting.

I'm ok with any of the plans suggested so far.
If we do two rds of movies, I can say that it'd definitively last less than one hr, as long as we keep things reasonably moving (may be even 45 min given fast readers and scorekeepers).
Also, the movies ques are designed to be for like a fun, relaxing, don't worry about it type of get-together, and not really competitive qb anyways, so they hopefully won't ruin ur apetite.
Finally, I'd be ok just marking off any extra time b/t tournies for it, but if we do decide to do it at lunch, I'd request that someone other than myself take care of ordering pizzas, charging ppl, etc, b/c it'll take me time just to set things up.

Mike wrote:
Well I would hope that if the pizza isn't there immediately after the round before lunch finishes, the next round should just be started. People are going to be hungry anyways so you might as well play quizbowl while you wait.

This is exactly what one ought to do, and what we normally have done when having pizza delivered IIRC. If Ryan and/or other people who want some sort of organizational say in this will be on IRC tonight, maybe we can make some firmer plans. I'm willing to help organize this, but I want to make sure I know what's going on.

By the way, the conditions that gave rise to the Chicago Open Pizza Incident of 2006 or whatever it was will not be in operation this year, so please rest assured that there will be no need to threaten deliverymen.

Thanks for being willing to take chage, Susan; I'm sure those running things will figure it out with you.

Not to be master of the obvious, but having done this ordering in regularly for tournaments with 130+ people, I recommend calling the place you want to use about a week out with a rough number of pizzas and the time they need to be delivered, as they'll want to have staff ready. Then, as Mr. White stated above, calling the day before and the morning of is wise, as you can give them an exact count and ensure they're on it. Maybe we can get a full count of how much pizza (or whatever) folks want and how much each person is responsible for in one of these threads, and folks can give cash to the person designated to pay the pizza guy in the morning at registration.

DumbJaques wrote:-Alternatively, I'd say ordering in food for everyone, if logistically possible, seems like the best way to cut down on excessive lunch delay. I hear bad things happened with this once though.

Back when I was at Swarthmore, we would routinely order pizza for all the teams competing, because a) it saved time and b) there were precious few food options in the borough. Out of the eight tournaments we hosted in my four years there, it blew up in our face once, when we had a 22-team field for SNEWT and the pizza place forgot that we had warned them the day before (or we forgot to warn them, it wasn't clear). The tournament was delayed ~45 minutes while we all hungrily waited, and a couple teams wandered off in search of food, which delayed things a little longer. I highly recommend ordering food in- especially if you can warn the establishment the night before, to cut down on the chance of snafus.

And if they do forget, then just delay lunch a round! (Should be a lot easier to pull off at CO then at J. Random Juniorbird Tournament...)

Well I would hope that if the pizza isn't there immediately after the round before lunch finishes, the next round should just be started. People are going to be hungry anyways so you might as well play quizbowl while you wait.

Yeah, after that tournament, I think we instituted the policy of "lunch will happen when we say it happens, and we'll have a staffer dedicated to alerting all the rooms when the pizza comes."